Max Rossi / Reuters

Shani Davis of the U.S. celebrates after winning the gold in Saturday's men's 1000-meter speedskating event in Turin, Italy.

So put yourself in Davis’ skates on Saturday night in the Oval Lingotto. Picture yourself as the grown-up version of that six-year-old kid who fell in love with speedskating.

That set him apart from the very start, apart from the mean streets, drug dealers and gangs. Apart from the kids who adored Michael Jordan and dreamed of becoming NBA stars. Apart from the kids who saw school as something to flee as soon as possible and education as a sign of weakness.

He didn’t care, the son of an enormously strong — and some say pushy, or worse — mother, Cherie Davis, who demanded that her son be strong, train hard and pursue his dream.

And now he was ready for the race of his life.

We’ve seen this before with American hopefuls in these Games, athletes who faced their moments of truth and wilted under the pressure of expectations. They missed gates, crashed and burned, chickened out, missed moves, fell to injury and found every imaginable way to fall short of the mark they and the great American hype machine had set for them.

And none of them had the pressure that was on Davis. He and his mother had kept up a running battle with the U.S. Speedskating Association for years, some of it going back to Salt Lake City in 2002 when he was a short-track specialist who was put on the team to skate in a relay event, then was never allowed to go on the track, not even in a preliminary heat.

He swore then he’d never take an opportunity from another skater to have an Olympic moment. That, he finally said Saturday, was why he didn’t skate the pursuit — because the team had brought skaters here for that purpose, and he wouldn’t take that chance away form them as it had been taken from him.

But refusing to skate the team event — added this year to the menu of what has always been an individual sport — Davis made himself the bad guy. He also didn’t train with the team, hanging out with the Canadians instead. More black marks for the black man, the only black man at the upper levels of his sport.

To make it more delicious, Hedrick skated in the fourth of 21 groups and put up a number that no one in the next 18 groups could match.

All that time, Davis watched and waited and thought about not being allowed to skate in 2002, being branded unpatriotic and a bad teammate, fighting the association. None of it had killed his desire. All of it made him stronger.

And when his moment came, the reigning world champion did what he was supposed to do. He blew away Hedrick and put up a number that no one could catch and only Cheeks — his teammate — could come close to.

Asked what it was like waiting all those years, Davis talked about being a product in a vending machine — you know, the ones that dispense snacks by means of a coiled wire that drops the selected treat off the shelf. He talked about waiting there, hanging on the edge, watching the other snacks be selected, watching them fall away to fulfill their destiny.

“I want to drop to the bottom and have somebody enjoy me, too,” he said.

Saturday, he got his wish. And when he was done talking about it, there wasn’t anyone in the room — Hedrick was elsewhere — who didn’t think that it couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy.